The mist was still covering the water, it was too early for men of import to be up and about. Their boats making soft, trickling splashes as they rocked into the shore, and their attendants pulled up their pant legs, moored the boats, and helped them step onto solid ground with deep bows.

I ground my teeth against each other, my heart dropping into my feet. The dizzying feeling of vertigo—of panic—started flowing into me. They, the council—Benjamael Wainwyre, Michaelis, Callomen, a bunch of others whose names and faces were blurring together in my sense-parched head, approached the lines of students. If I had been late today, I would have been dead, chosen for the Misfortunes for sure.

Add it to the list of narrow escapes, the stinging sarcasm at the back of my head calmed me down, a buzz like a cut on the arm, clearing house.

Twelve in total—no, thirteen. Ru’our Kholtan was also here to play with the toys in the sandbox.

Twenty-three year old Head Elder Benjamael Wainwyre approached on foot with a puzzled frown, his heavy, woolen robes open, stroking the length of his short beard. He came to leadership three years ago at eighteen after the plague wiped half the village out and scarred the rest of us for life. Not all young men were too young for leadership, but he was. Kholtan’s head was close to his, conferring—the trader with long, shining, straight auburn hair and lightweight, billowing silks and the boy pulled into his gravitational orbit, the two of them ahead of the rest of the council by the pace of Kholtan’s stride.

It was under fifty degrees out, but he showed no sign of being cold, brandishing his signet ring on his pinky—deep purple. Only Xavians used signets, and only Xavian citizens were permitted to use shades of red in rings and wax. They’d cut your signet finger off for impersonating a Xavi seal. And yet, in the wrong light, Kholtan’s could almost look maroon—desperation, ego, and stupidity rolled into one visible signet for everyone to see the moment they laid eyes on him.

This village had no gods or heroes, so when one came along, I expected a spectacle. I wasn’t disappointed. Kholtan had quickly had a chair added for him to become the unprecedented thirteenth member of the council—and young Head Elder Benjamael Wainwyre most trusted confidante:

“It’s critical that ever last detail is in order when the investors arrive,” to the village with seven hundred years of isolation, he was saying, “so we must ensure that even the students perform well.”

“It will be,” Benjamael assured him, “our village is more than ready for this.”

Ru’our nodded, leaned in close, as if Benjamael’s words conveyed unique significance. “Your confidence seals mine, Head Elder.” His talent laid in the fact that he really did listen—and then he manipulated. With the glints of poverty and starving ambition that occasionally slit through his velvet-smooth, brilliant, effusive persona, I could pigeonhole Kholtan as a liar as instant. It took one to know one.

The rest of the the council trailed behind them like ducklings behind a mother duck. Ru’our kept them separate, moving to the side and out of the way to continue their private conversation, monopolizing the Head Elder, their robes rustling across the hard-packed ground of the training field. Mirjam, the Medicine Woman, and the village’s Master of Foreign Affairs, the Weir, were conspicuously absent. But I noticed Michaelis’ annoyance—he was the oldest member of the council, watching them stately and deliberately, like a hawk. Once you’d been important for so long, you had an idea of how you should be constantly regarded.

Benjamael called the Studentmaster. “Aldin.”

The muscle in Studentmaster Percius Aldin’s chin twitched with irritation, but he immediately went. He was a tall, slim man—precisely pointed beard, waxen complexion, deep-set, beady, incisive grey eyes. His gaze cut with constant dissatisfaction. The bottom clasp on his shirt was still missing, a quasi-elaborate fastener with a leaf pattern. Elvias’s mother did his laundry, and he gave Elvias a brutal licking when it was lost, even though he was easily one of the best students in the class. Mirjam took one look at the student’s back and almost threw hands with him over it even though she was a head shorter. Aldin might have trained for combat, he might have been a singular duelist who moved like a snake in the water with a sword, but you didn’t fuck with an ex-Kyjan Civil War medic. The clasp was still missing, he probably couldn’t afford the blacksmith to replace it or was too bitter to pay in the face of such a cruel injustice against his dignity and position. The former Head Elder, Benjamael’s father, had given him that shirt. Training students before their apprenticeships was unforgiving and meaningless work, but it granted him status—which was all a power-hungry foundling in his forties could thirst for.

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God forbid he settled for a button made of anything but solid gold. If only I was more of an asshole or better in a fight, I could look forward to an illustrious future like his, alone, allergic to the exigences of happiness, starching my collar extra stiff to beat my jealousy and bitterness out on adolescent boys. But I was firmly within the sphere of his contempt, along with buttons and Head Elder Benjamael Wainwyre himself.

Wainwyre barely spared the Studentmaster a glance. “We’ll take a full demonstration of the student class’s capabilities right now,” Benjamael commanded.

I bit my tongue. They’re not looking at you. Keep it that way, Seth.

Aldin gave the orders for the class to assume stance and begin. His eyes caught me like a knife—he expected me to fail.

I swallowed. I knew it was irrational, to think they were all watching me, but suddenly, they were all watching me. My clarity dissipated and my tongue grew thick and fat in my mouth like a clod of moss. I tried to focus on the movements, the choreography of the punches and kicks, but there was no music. My head felt thick. I was clumsily, stiff, and sometimes a half-second behind everyone, their eyes tracing my shoulders, my chest, my waist, my legs, sizing up, sizing down. I could scrap if I had to scrap, and as dangerous as that was, I preferred it. They mean nothing, I told myself, You never belonged here anyway. I forgot a movement and scrambled to catch up. But it was the twentieth and final form. I finished the entire demonstration floundering, a beat behind.

Master Aldin, sneering at my performance, answered my woefully misguided prayer for a fight. “Ordin. Seth. Weapons down. Square up and spar.”

This is a punishment. He’s using me to highlight him. I was a tool. Yennis crossed his arms, his face stony like he expected a disaster. He wasn’t my friend, exactly. Kyjans looked out for Kyjans. Except for Ordin, stepping forward with a leering grin. His mousey, curly brown hair was unkempt like mine, but he put on muscle without trying. At sixteen, I was stick thin and short as a twelve-year-old. I might have saved his life back when he was only the big boy on the train, but he hated me now.

I tore from the group to face him, knowing I was about to get my ass handed to me. I tried to sneer. If I was going down like a sack of bricks, I wanted to throw an insult at least. But the elders were watching. I couldn’t find my tongue. I squared up into a fighting stance, fists up and knees slightly bent, feeling like a statue in my own body, legs burning like they were full of ants—he walked right up to me and shoved me. Pain exploded in my face from his fist.

Everything started to move slower. The chill from the water and cooling sweat working its way up through my core, the sky tilting like a thrown snowglobe slaloming from a child’s clumsy hands. My ankles crossed, one tripping over the other as I fell back. Ordin’s sneer burned into my mind’s gaze as my head tilted skywards, my shoulders stinging where he shoved me.

The yellow-grassed ground rose to meet my back like cement, and everything froze with the shock of air leaving my lungs.

An owl was floating in the sky, circling beneath the canopy. A heavy, brown-feathered predator in the vague blue of dawn. Bad omen. I could feel the numbness from the impact in the back of my skull. I could feel the air rushing as Ordin’s heel drove down towards my eye socket.

C’mon, bitch.

I threw up my hands. I could feel the impact of the heels of my palms, my fingers wrenching into the joint of his ankle like nails. The student tournament was in exactly a week. If I break his ankle, he’d be limping for it. I twisted him as my whole body did, wrenching my frame out of the way along with the bones in his foot.

My feet were underneath me, flat on the ground, toes in the damp, dew-fogged grass. Gasp. Air made its entrance to my lungs like a formal introduction. Cold.

Ordin’s shriek broke the ringing in my ears, and he stumbled backwards.

I tripped back down to my hands and knees, my nose bleeding into the dirt where the circling of students had worn away most of the grass, my lips pressing together into a grimace. It wasn’t satisfaction, but it was damn close. Ordin yelled, sucking air and cradling his ankle, and my grimace morphed into a grin. Definitely broken. Good.

I told Yinjane Wainwyre there were no Misfortunes, but the truth was more complicated. Six months on the run and a train and six years of Aldin hitting me had put darkness inside me. It had grown. And it would come to collect.

I never used to get nervous, freezing and glitching whenever someone advanced on me, the whole world narrowing into a red tunnel that took my senses away, inevitable. But now I did. I’d been falling behind the class for months. I didn’t sleep any more, and when I did, I slept the way I slept last night. I could borrow a number of hours with the potions that Mirjam was giving me to poison my body, but even if I got an apprenticeship the clock was slipping through my hands.